Consultant Repeatedly Criticised For Conduct Despite Consistently Strong Results

A privately engaged analytical consultant, retained on an informal basis to assist a metropolitan police service with cases it has been unable to close, is once again the subject of complaints about his interpersonal conduct, even as the same complainants acknowledge that his findings have been correct on every occasion they can recall.

The consultant holds no official position. He describes his role using a job title he is widely believed to have invented himself, and operates from a shared residential address with a flatmate who accompanies him to most engagements and maintains a written record of their work.

Those who have worked alongside him describe a consistent pattern. A case is presented as insoluble. The consultant arrives, examines the scene briefly, and produces an account of events that proves accurate in detail. He then, according to multiple witnesses, explains how he reached that account in a manner several have characterised as unnecessary.

Police representatives confirm that the consultant is called in precisely because internal efforts have stalled, and that his rate of resolution is, by any reasonable measure, exceptional. They also confirm that nearly every engagement generates at least one formal expression of concern about his treatment of the people present, including grieving relatives, junior officers and, on more than one occasion, the senior detective who requested his help.

The flatmate, a former medical professional, is generally regarded as the more approachable of the two and is frequently asked to relay messages.

---

The consultant declines bedside manner

I am told, with some regularity, that I am difficult to work with. I have considered this carefully and concluded that the people raising it are simply not very interesting.

My work speaks for itself. A case is brought to me that a department of trained professionals has been unable to resolve. I resolve it. The interval between my arrival and my conclusion is usually a matter of minutes. I do not see how the surrounding pleasantries are relevant to that outcome.

People say I am rude. What I am is correct, at speed, in front of an audience that finds the speed unsettling. There is a difference, though I accept it is a fine one and that I am the only person who reliably observes it.

Yes, I have on occasion informed a client of a private matter they had not disclosed, before they finished their first sentence. This is not cruelty. It is efficiency. I would rather not sit through the sentence.

I am asked why I always explain my reasoning. The answer is that the reasoning is the interesting part. The crime is, frankly, the least of it. If people would stop weeping for a moment they might appreciate the method.

A few points, since they keep arising:

• I do not attend funerals or family liaison sessions well. This is acknowledged.
• I have been described as cold. I would describe myself as unhurried by feelings.
• My flatmate handles the parts that involve being sorry. He is very good at it.

The detective who calls me in also writes the reports that complain about me. I find this confusing but I continue to attend, because the alternative is that the cases go unsolved, and I would not enjoy that.

---

Results and collateral irritation

DP

The interesting tension here is that the consultant treats accuracy and conduct as the same axis, when they are entirely separate ones. You can be completely right and still cause real harm in how you deliver it. He keeps offering correctness as a defence against complaints that were never about correctness. That mismatch is the whole problem, and he genuinely cannot see it.

KM

Every organisation has someone like this: a single point of failure who is also the only person who can do the thing. The strategic risk is not his manner, it's the dependency. They have built an entire resolution pipeline around one individual who refuses to develop the people around him, refuses to document a transferable method, and answers every conduct review by closing another case faster. That is not a capability. That is a hostage situation with excellent outcomes.

The recurring question, raised at successive reviews, is whether an organisation that depends on someone is in any position to manage him.

OH

What is rarely examined is that this individual has no formal standing whatsoever. He is not employed, not warranted, and not bound by the codes that would normally govern conduct in this setting. Yet he is routinely granted access to scenes, evidence and vulnerable people. The complaints about his manner are, legally, the least of it. The exposure sits entirely with the people who keep inviting him in and then writing it down.

---

Cases from the waiting room